Can an autistic ever write a non-autistic character?

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C2V
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06 Aug 2017, 3:46 am

So a while ago I started rewriting a book I had written when I was about 15. 15-year-old me was a technically terrible writer, but the premise of the story was a good one so I decided to try rewriting it as an adult.
One of the main issues with writing it from a character perspective is I don't intend this character to be autistic. I don't suppose you'd call her "neurotypical" as she is a fantasy character and has unusual mental abilities, but she isn't meant to be an autistic or autistic-like character at all. One of the most obvious deficits in trying to write a more "normal" character was the emotional basis - 15-year-old me seems to have understood that emotions existed for other people, but obviously had no idea about normal emotional responses, so emotional character reactions were just shoehorned in wherever, without proper context.
Now, adult me still has no idea about normal emotional reactions, but as I'm older, I have had more exposure to these ideas, both through fictional means (books, tv, movies, etc) and more time exposed to normal people. So I am trying to imagine what the emotional repertoire would be for this character. That's what writers do, right? Imagine?
But is this ever truly possible for an autistic? To get into the perspective of someone who is not?
I'm doubting it.


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whatamievendoing
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06 Aug 2017, 5:21 am

Well, it's not impossible. But I can definitely see how it could be very difficult.


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06 Aug 2017, 5:29 am

I have quite a lot of experience of writing (my weakness is starting something from scratch) as I went to college and uni to study film-making.

Anyway I'd say it's possible to write a non-autistic character - your only trying to get information across to your reader (or viewer) so I think a lot of aspects of a character are more acceptable being a work of fiction.

For example I know a lot of people discuss if certain characters are autistic or not, the main one being Sherlock Holmes.
Is he autistic? Maybe if you analyse him, but I doubt he was originally written (or maybe ever written) 'to be autistic'.
He is a work of fiction so as a viewer we accept his eccentricities as character strengths or flaws. Also, being a story, we technically only see what's important to a story or narrative thread, so if he is autistic maybe sometimes he flaps his arms, or other stims we just don't see it (if that makes any sense :? )

I do struggle with dialogue, but it helps to speak it aloud or act it out so you can get a feeling of it being natural or not.
If you can you could always get someone to help with that side of things, but as I said before, being a story our human brains naturally fill in the blanks when reading or watching things as we try to figure out what's going on, so I reckon even if you wrote a character as being autistic, unless you made sure it was pointed out in the story somewhere then I doubt many people would pick up on it anyway.

One final thing I will recommend is a book called 'into the woods' by John Yorke - it's a very good book about how story's work and why we tell them.
I recommend it to any writer because it's very helpful for writing in general.

Hope this helps


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ASPartOfMe
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06 Aug 2017, 2:12 pm

It is possible if you have a lot of experience with people.


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06 Aug 2017, 5:34 pm

If a non-autistic person can make up an autistic person, then I would think an autistic person can make up a non-autistic person. :D


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06 Aug 2017, 5:54 pm

I think so, yes, if the autistic person writing the non-autistic character is one of those who tends to observe a lot about the behaviors of people around them. For example, many females on the spectrum so invest themselves in watching and learning what NTs do and say, in order to mimic them and hide their own traits, that they can probably recreate a convincing non-autistic fictional character if they are into creative writing.

There are some autistic actors who seem to be able to play NT, such as Paddy Considine, and it's probably because of mimicry of what they've observed. So, I think that would be the key.



kitesandtrainsandcats
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06 Aug 2017, 6:12 pm

Indeed possible. Or at least possible for me. Have a sci-fi story I occasionally play at writing (and rewriting) (and editing) for a couple months at several year intervals. I haven't intended for any character to be autistic at all and so far my NT friends who have read some or all of it, about 8 people, have not said they thought any character to be autistic.

And in what totally bashes a stereotype of we on the spectrum a couple of them have said that I write dialogue, and emotional scenes, very well - well enough to make a couple readers cry.

I am unable to describe to anyone, even myself, how to do it; 'it' being to write non-autistic characters.


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06 Aug 2017, 7:57 pm

C2V wrote:
So a while ago I started rewriting a book I had written when I was about 15. 15-year-old me was a technically terrible writer, but the premise of the story was a good one so I decided to try rewriting it as an adult.
One of the main issues with writing it from a character perspective is I don't intend this character to be autistic. I don't suppose you'd call her "neurotypical" as she is a fantasy character and has unusual mental abilities, but she isn't meant to be an autistic or autistic-like character at all. One of the most obvious deficits in trying to write a more "normal" character was the emotional basis - 15-year-old me seems to have understood that emotions existed for other people, but obviously had no idea about normal emotional responses, so emotional character reactions were just shoehorned in wherever, without proper context.
Now, adult me still has no idea about normal emotional reactions, but as I'm older, I have had more exposure to these ideas, both through fictional means (books, tv, movies, etc) and more time exposed to normal people. So I am trying to imagine what the emotional repertoire would be for this character. That's what writers do, right? Imagine?
But is this ever truly possible for an autistic? To get into the perspective of someone who is not?
I'm doubting it.


The biggest conflict between myself and the masses as far as fictional writing goes is as such...

I tend to write in second person. This gives me the ability to tell the story from the point of view of the observer, such that all characters are representative of themselves, and not seen through another person. However, most NT people tell me they only enjoy stories written in first person, because it helps them relate to the character through which it's told.

I object to this in my writing because then the story becomes about the emotions and perspectives of a single character, and rather than what actually happens, and to me, it's more important to know what actually happens.



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07 Aug 2017, 5:36 am

^ It's interesting that. I think I might find second person distracting because it seems to assume identification, whereas I would not identify. It would be that character's perspective, not transposing that onto me, the reader.
But it also makes me think of awkward "tenses." I'll admit to reading a bit of Fifty Shades of Grey and the present-tense narrative of that initially came off as badly written fanfiction. However I think once you get used to it it might be more familiar and easier to go along with - I haven't read enough of that story to know if the present tense telling gets less awkward or not.
My tale is also written oddly with respect to tense - it is written in retrospect, from the perspective of the character as an old woman, retelling the story. In this structure, when a significant character is introduced for example, there will often be the character's narration voice interjecting, commenting on the significance of that character for the rest of her lifetime or commenting that they would figure greatly in events referenced to come later in the story, etc.


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07 Aug 2017, 7:07 am

BirdInFlight wrote:
There are some autistic actors who seem to be able to play NT, such as Paddy Considine, and it's probably because of mimicry of what they've observed. So, I think that would be the key.


I'd completely forgot that Paddy Considine is an Aspie, he was diagnosed late in life and I'm sure he has said he got by through mimicking other people which is probably why he became an actor.

Other actors I know to be Aspies are Daryl Hannah and Dan Akroyd, the latter of which has a fair few writing credits, although Paddy Considine has also written a few things


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Lost_dragon
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10 Aug 2017, 3:03 am

Chronos wrote:


The biggest conflict between myself and the masses as far as fictional writing goes is as such...

I tend to write in second person. This gives me the ability to tell the story from the point of view of the observer, such that all characters are representative of themselves, and not seen through another person. However, most NT people tell me they only enjoy stories written in first person, because it helps them relate to the character through which it's told.

I object to this in my writing because then the story becomes about the emotions and perspectives of a single character, and rather than what actually happens, and to me, it's more important to know what actually happens.


That's interesting to me because I've actually found the opposite to be true, I enjoy writing in first person because I find it easier to write a descriptive -heavy story and internal monologues this way, but people often complain to me about this and ask me to write in second person. Especially my sister, she complains if I write in first person.

I like to focus on what the character physically feels, especially if I'm writing about a phobia of theirs or if they're perceiving the scene slightly differently to the other characters (I tend to write stories where a character slowly goes insane so what they see/what they are hallucinating isn't actually happening in the story, and I often use the other characters to allude/infer that).

Currently I'm working on getting better at second person writing, and that seems to be going well because my friends keep bugging me to write a sequel. :D


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11 Aug 2017, 7:20 am

Chronos wrote:

The biggest conflict between myself and the masses as far as fictional writing goes is as such...

I tend to write in second person.


That's pretty rare- I've mostly seen it in short stories, generally used to pull the reader into something intensely subjective and descriptive. The only novel I can think of is "Halting State" by Charles Stross, which uses three different second-person protagonists. In that case, it's a reference to gaming- you "play" the three characters.


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11 Aug 2017, 8:26 am

I once read that in good writing you leave room for the reader to fill in the blanks, rather than spelling it all out. Maybe this can work in your advantage. A NT reader might actually fill in things that you as an autistic person leave out.


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